Jessie Gaeddert

She was born 9/27/21 in Peking China of missionary parents who had gone there in 1908. However, their home base was in Puyang in Habei Provence. At an early age she was sent to school in Jingushan, a distance from Puyang, where she finished as a Junior in High School. When the parents returned home on furlough she remained in Freeman, South Dakota attending Freeman Academy for her Senior year and then attended Bethel College where she received both her BA Degree and Nursing Degree.

As soon as the war was over, she went with the first director of the Mennonite Relief Agency known as Mennonite Central Committee to Europe to help bring food and supplies into Germany. Allied forces felt it was still too dangerous and they first went to London, and then some time in Paris and then in Basil Switzerland before they could go into Germany. They made a significant difference wherever they had an opportunity to have feeding programs and gave out clothing and blankets. One location was the Wuppertal University campus. When I was working in Germany 1950-1952, I visited Wuppertal and some of the young students then were now on the University staff and said it made a difference between life and death -- the nutritional soup, raisins and nuts for protein and energy helped save them.

They didn’t always have the proper equipment and she told me they had to be innovative. One time when they had a puncture in the tire, they used bubble gum to patch the tube.

She then returned to Bethel College, working in the Bethel Deaconess Hospital and also acquiring some additional academic work. She then became director of the Health Center on the campus and also taught Physiology and Anatomy and Advanced First Aid.

Working several years after high school, I decided to come to Bethel College and met her there as a nurse. We dated some during the second semester in the winter of 1949. Applying to the same Mennonite organization she had worked with in Germany , received a call to work in Washington DC through December. Left for Germany on January 4th 1950. Jessie came to visit me in DC, and then returned to teach at Bethel College.

Upon my return from Germany, we were married August 27, 1952 and lived in Newton for one year while I finished my Sophomore year. We then moved to Lawrence Kansas, where our daughter, Diane, was born in 1954. Jessie worked as a nurse at the local hospital and also taught the OB course to the nurses from KU Medical School, supporting me while I finished my BA degree and moved back to Newton.

In 1957 we moved to Kansas City to establish an insurance agency for the company. Then in 1959 we moved back to Newton, KS since the company had appointed Menno to be the Regional Director for Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. This necessitated significant travel and being gone from the family for several days a week. It was in September 1955 in Newton that our twin sons Ken and Don were born, and in October 1959 our son Dwayne was born in Newton, KS.

In Kansas City we helped start the Rainbow Avenue Mennonite Church which was composed of mostly young medical students with families and doctors. Each time that we lived in Newton, we were active in the Bethel College Mennonite Church.

In 1962 we moved to Denver Colorado and immediately became active in the Arvada Mennonite Church. It was difficult at first, because whereas Menno had had a salary, expense account, car, hospitalization and pension plan, he was now absolutely on his own. Jessie had offers to work at a local hospital, but we decided that she should remain home as mother to four children.

In addition to homemaker and mother, she was a Den Mother in the Boy Scouts, and in doing this the neighborhood boys developed a deep appreciation for her creative projects. She helped out in various ways in the elementary school where the children attended. During the years that the children were in elementary, junior high and high school, she never missed a parent/teacher interview, concert or basketball game unless we were out of town.

During these years, Menno qualified for numerous company trips -- here in the USA and abroad, and Jessie enjoyed being a part of these. In addition to company trips, we took personal trips to Europe, Paraguay, Peru and Bolivia. She served six years on the General Conference Mennonite Church Foreign Mission Board. This gave us an opportunity to make a trip to China and also stopping in Taiwan to see her brother, the administrator and surgeon at our mission hospital. During this trip, she had opportunity to visit with her brother Roland her childhood home in Puyang/Habei Provence.

In 1975, our daughter Diane developed Lupus and both of her kidneys stopped functioning, which gave Jessie an opportunity to donate one of her kidneys to Diane, which is still functioning today. Jessie never had any problems with only one kidney.

Jessie had stamina and guts. She would climb with the family in Colorado and in Canada, making it almost to the top of Longs Peak. The children were amazed at her skill and ability to keep up. She played tennis, badminton, table tennis and was an excellent swimmer, participating in various other activities.

In 1989 when the children were involved in their own careers, our son Don offered to manage the insurance agency so we could accomplish our desire of volunteering for some type of work abroad with the Mennonite Church. We left in April 1989 for Taiwan where Menno was business manager and treasurer of the mission and Jessie was in charge of the guest rooms on the floor above our apartment. In addition to this, we also became active in teaching English to the University students and relating to two specific couples -- one living across the hall from our apartment. He was finishing his residency in ear, nose and throat and she was a speech pathologist. We had supper together on Friday evenings and Bible study. We had the privilege of giving them their English names -- David and Susan -- after carefully considering their character and attributes. We learned to appreciate each other, we in our later 60’s almost 70, and they in their early 30’s. The relationship and love for each other continues beyond our stay in Taiwan so that when Susan came to do graduate work in the United States, she stayed with us several months while she improved her English here at Emily Griffith. The other couple -- Gary and Esther -- continued their relationship with us and as their three children have grown, come to visit us and refer to us as Grandpa and Grandma and communicate periodically through e-mail and phone enriching our lives more than we can express through words.

The young adults in the church we attended in Taiwan would invite us to go on hikes and climb their mountain outside Taipei and were amazed at Jessie’s ability to stay with the group at her age when we were with them on the hiking trails.

When back in Denver, Jessie was active in the Arvada Mennonite Church, preparing the coffee each Sunday and also making the King Soopers certificates available for the members. She was always helping in the kitchen at special events, attending Bible Study and other meetings in addition to Sunday morning. She especially enjoyed hosting people from other countries, inviting one young lady from Paraguay working as a volunteer/trainee in Denver to live with us for six months.

Another ministry that she enjoyed very much and received tremendous blessing from - many have said she was a blessing to them - is the Gideon Auxiliary. She held various offices in the local camp. I have no idea how many Testaments she has given to nurses and other medical support personnel in nursing homes and hospitals as well as leaving Bibles in physician and dentist offices. She enjoyed attending both State and International Conventions.

But above all the activities she was involved in, she was a person of deep devotion, commitment and a deep love for the Lord, her husband, her children and her grandchildren. She was on a mission to the very end. She had gone to different stores to pick up the items needed for kits for Haiti that the church members also had assembled and we were taking to Newton Kansas to the warehouse to be shipped. She never wavered in her faith or love for the Lord, and knew that the Lord loved her. She struggled so hard the last few days and hours of her life, but the heart couldn’t supply the energy any longer and she went home. What a glorious homecoming that must have been.

Services, Olinger's Crown Hill Mortuary, Saturday May 1 at 3 p.m., 29th and Wadsworth. Donations may be made to Gideons International or Arvada Mennonite Church.